What's something that absolutely screams ‘British childhood’ to you?’

[MyCheeryPearlTraybake]

Going to the corner shop for some custard creams

Narnia on sunday nights, hopscotch on the pavement outside the house, wooden handled skipping roaps, antiques roadshow, sprinklers in the summer.

@Tangomango1 Clarks shoes?? It was Kickers all the way here, with the biggest heel we could risk 🤣 (this is year 7 though, Clarks I think was a thing when I was 6 or so)

Teen youth cult's,Mods , biker's,punks,skins ,Ted's, Northern soul punters,new romantics.
All of our own making nothing manufactured.
My thing was Mod then Northern soul and still is 43 years later.

Rushing from the kitchen to the living room because Crossroads/Coronation Street was on!😅

Stars On Sunday

The David Nixon Show

The Golden Shot

The Generation Game

Randal and Hopkirk

Thunderbirds

The Champions

Opportunity Knocks

Orange plastic beakers that smell of...beakers.

Yay! Found it!

Was born in early 90’s.

Caravan holidays on Lincolnshire/East Yorks coast.
A big cardboard postbox at Christmas time in primary school, to send your classmates Christmas cards.
Collecting and trading Pokémon cards.
Chippy tea on a Friday, with bits (scraps).
Buying pirate DVDs and CDs from market stalls, or dad coming home from work with a price list of pirate copies his mate “Dodgy Dave” can get.
Wearing jelly sandals and having your feet cut to shreds.
Fairground rides only costing £1.
Strawberry picking at local farms in late spring.
Bonfire night - pubs would have large bonfires and firework displays, selling toffee apples, bonfire lollies and pie & peas.
Seeing older kids with a “Penny for the Guy” on the highstreet in the days before bonfire night.
McDonalds having Furbies as the toy in happy meals.
Chatting on MSN everyday night after school. My parents weren’t strict so we even accessed loads of strange websites like ChatRoulette, Omegle, etc.

Playing out roller skating the next street to ours had a smoother pavement was better for skating on. Roller club on a Friday night in local church hall. Skating around like crazy for 2 hour's to music. Think it only cost 30p. Given 10p for penny sweets. Marsh's Sass was the best I miss it.

Yip never forgotten that beaker smell with the frayed rim

Going to the local village police station house to tell them you’d be on holiday and could they keep an eye on your house
Tartan plastic thermos of tea drunk in the car and eaten with sandwiches whilst it poured with rain at the beach
10p in your Brownie pouch for the pay phone
Hi De Hi, Allo Allo, Bullseye, Howard’s Way
Home and Away and Neighbours, the horror when you realised it was Friday and you wouldn’t see the resolution to the cliffhanger ending until Monday
School fete, church fete, village fete
Ink pens and cartridges

Happy days 😊

"I went to a Chinese restaurant,
To buy a loaf of bread, bread, bread.
He wrapped it up in a five pound note,
And this is what he said, said, said.

My name is Elvis Presley,
Girls are sexy,
Sitting in the back seat,
Drinking Pepsi..."

Also, Mob. Like hide and seek but more fun. It usually went like:

"Ip Dip Dog Shit,
Who stepped in it?"
then absolutely legging it to hide.

Saturday night telly with pizza - Noel’s House Party, Blind Date and Gladiators.
Vienetta after Sunday dinner.
Eating fish and chips in a caravan at Haven in the pissing down rain.
Tuck shop after school on a Friday and buying 10p mix ups
Kerbie and British Bulldog
Gingham school dresses

@Floatlikeafeather2
Yes, I think our childhoods were similar - we had the radio at home, but my grandmother had a television so we could watch Andy Pandy, Woodentops, and Bill and Ben. My younger brother was of the Play School generation. Wet picnics in the rain - oh yes, also spending the whole day on the common on our bikes. Younger children had tricycles - you don’t see them any more - and my brother had a splendid metal pedal car. I got 1/6d pocket money - I remember saving up until I had 10/6, and asking my mother for a ten bob note - actual paper money. When decimalisation came in, it all seemed very strange. I remember as a teenager being allowed a Vesta curry - it seemed very exotic.

This is DEFINITELY a my family thing cos we were in a bus and had no electricity. But turning on the generator just to watch EastEnders, Red Dwarf and Father Ted.

I miss Woolworths pick n mix too

Sunday roast
Fish and chips by the beach especially
Mr whippy
Not wearing waterproofs when raining

God I thought we were the only people who had to put money in our telly 😂 yes, if it went out that was it until another sixpence became available. I was very young then but I can still remember it. A few years on from that I remember being handed thrupenny bits to put in the gas meter

Enid Blyton

Oh and tamagotchis! I neglected mine and it died 😭

And weren’t there two different flavours?

My mum wouldn’t let me have Barbie either and I was so gutted 😒
She reckoned Sindy was a bit more ‘modest’ and her assets were definitely not as impressive as Barbie’s which made her more suitable 🤷‍♀️

All of this. But I went out alone on my bike all day before I was a teen.
Also picnics with a calor gaz stove and tea from a teapot.

Going for a picnic to a village with a nice picnic area by a stream and a play park, only we sat in the car to eat our sandwiches and weren't allowed on the play park. We had to go for a walk from one end of the village to the other and back again instead.
We did this most Saturday teatimes from Easter to October half term!

I'm in my fifties so this is a 1970s childhood...

Having loads of freedom in the school holidays, playing out for hours without my parents necessarily having a clue where I was (not that they'd be happy if they knew, I wasn't supposed to go further than round the block without telling them)...
...but being scared shitless of ponds, farms, electricity pylons, railway lines, matches, slippery floors and escalators because of all the terrifying public information films. (Not such a bad thing, if you ask me.)
Every single summer's day in the 1970s being hot, which they can't have been, but it definitely felt that way.
Sitting out on the playing fields in summer term with the smell of fresh-cut grass.
Watching Swap Shop on a Saturday morning, which reminds me...
...decent children's TV! (provided your parents weren't watching something else on The Only TV In The House...)
Not understanding why you weren't allowed to go camping on your own when the Famous Five were allowed to.
Thinking the plastic rings that came with Twinkle comic were amazing, and cutting out the dress-up figure and clothes on the back of the Bunty. (I sometimes used to make my own too...)
Really festive Christmas decorations, all shiny foil, fire-hazard glimmery artificial tree and paper chains you'd made yourself. And your parents' drinks trolley groaning with Advocaat and Babycham every Christmas, not that you knew what they tasted like or even were.
Really wanting a 10-colour biro and a Sindy doll ... and nearly exploding with excitement at getting them.
Going in for WH Smith's 'Win a Pony' competition(!!!) every year and never winning.
Taking glass pop bottles back to the shop to get 10p back.
Hearing the rag-and-bone man in the street. (No, I wasn't born in 1920. 😄)
Tupperware beakers of squash on school trips. (As Jeannette Winterson once observed, the Tupperware always heated up and burnt your mouth.)
Playing out on bikes or chalking the pavement up to play hopscotch. And someone would usually bring a spacehopper out too, but they were never really as boingy as you'd like them to be.
Never getting to play the Pong game you got for Christmas because The Only TV In The House was always in use (and, of course, always being the one who had to turn it over because there was no remote and 'your legs are the youngest' 😄)
Getting excited when the teacher wheeled in the TV on a big trolley... and then waiting half the lesson to watch anything because somehow there was always a technical hitch of some kind. (Looking back at these, it's a bit sad how many of them revolve around the TV... 😄)
Findus crispy pancakes with Angel Delight to follow. Vesta curries were for people who were 'a bit fancy'.
Ladybirds. Ladybirds Every Freaking Where. Or was that just 1976?

(I'm bound to think of loads more as soon as I hit post...)

Buying cigarettes for my DP from the corner shop with a note from DM

2p machines at the arcade
Dancing to Agadoo and Bananarama and wearing my Dad’s shirt as a dress with matching blue eyeshadow and pixie boots at the caravan park disco
Huge deep snow in the winter
Tinned stewing steak and tinned potatoes with runner beans grown by my Dad